


Many the Miles

by misura



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Multi, Resistance Member Armitage Hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 09:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14829980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: When its most valuable mole in the First Order gets threatened, the Resistance sends its finest team to retrieve him. (not an AU)





	Many the Miles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kereia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/gifts).



> a treat, because I just could not resist this prompt

"They almost shot me!" Hux said. He was, he felt, justified in feeling shocked at the blatant treachery.

Going by the expression on the faces of his two companions, they disagreed.

"You're surprised?" Rey asked. "Honest?"

Hux had given years of his life to the stormtrooper program. He hadn't been the one to set it up, but he liked to think he'd adopted it, made it his own. _My own little slice of the First Order_ \- except that when the time would come for him to leave, so would they.

The original program had been, frankly, a nightmare. A shining beacon of inefficiency. Hux had made improvements all along the line. An entire system, meant to weed out the weak, the rebellious and the independent, and ship them off to the Resistance. The ones who stayed were the ones who would obey anyone they perceived as being in charge - and the one in charge, naturally, would be Hux.

He'd sat through dozens of meetings to discuss the unusually high number of accidental deaths in the reeducation facilities, before he'd realized that faking a suicide was much easier than faking yet another blaster and/or speeder accident. (Phasma had been pleased, he recalled. As it turned out, the notion that people might kill themselves for having failed to live up to her expectations appealed.)

"Are you all right?" Rose asked. Hux became aware of the fact that she was standing very close to him. She also looked a good deal more sympathetic than Rey.

Of course, there gaped a great divide between sympathy and the kind of thing he hadn't been able to have for quite some time now. Deep undercover work did not lend itself well to any kind of social life.

"Fine," he said, stepping back. She looked ... _soft_ , he decided, where Rey was hard.

Not that he would say 'no' to some offered comfort from that quarter. If Leia had decided to make his return trip both pleasant and frustrating, she had succeeded as admirably as ever.

Rey nodded once, pulling out her blaster again.

 _Don't kill anyone._ Maybe they hadn't gotten a good enough look at him to realize who he was. Maybe they'd really been aiming at Rey or Rose, thinking Hux was their hostage, their prisoner.

 _Maybe they're not as loyal to you as you think they are._ He'd missed FN-2187, after all - the one who now went by the name of 'Finn', bestowed upon him by Leia's golden boy, Poe Dameron.

Hux had lost track of the rank the man held right now. He wouldn't be surprised if it was Private. _Reckless. Dangerous._ He'd enjoyed their chat, though. It might be fun to meet the man face to face, see what all the fuss was about.

"Let me talk to them," he said, as Rey readied herself to make another attempt at reaching their ship.

She looked at him as if he was crazy.

"Please," he added. "I know them." Or would, as soon as they took off their helmets or got close enough for him to read their identifiers.

Rey looked at Rose, who shrugged. "You're absolutely sure?"

 _No._ "Yes." What was the Resistance about, if not hope? "The two of you should stay back a bit. They musn't think you pose any kind of threat to me."

_I am General Hux. I am in command. I am in control. You will obey my orders._

 

The good news was: they'd definitely recognized him.

Rose had body-slammed him against the wall, probably saving his life - and that wasn't so bad, either, having her pressed up all against him. _Down, boy._

Rey had the grace to look angry, rather than smug. "All right. Time to do things our way."

Hux decided not to object. As Phasma would say: sometimes, you simply had to accept failure.

(Of course, when she said it, she usually meant someone ought to be executed for incompetence and/or disloyalty bordering on treason.)

 

And then they were away, finally, and Hux remembered how to breathe.

 _"You're an agent for the Resistance?"_ Rey had said, when he'd shown up at the designated meeting place. _"You?"_

Hux had decided not to go into the whole story of how he thought the First Order had some great ideas. It was only the execution that posed the problem. Order must be brought to the galaxy, yes, but any kind of proper, lasting order also required a bit of chaos. You couldn't simply declare yourself Supreme Leader and demand absolute obedience - or rather, you could, but it wouldn't work.

 _"Yes,"_ he'd said.

He'd expected new orders, a request for information, perhaps. The First Order had friends in many places, not all of them known to the Resistance.

Instead, it had been, _"We're here to get you out,"_ and Hux hadn't given himself the time to consider what that meant, what he was going to be doing with himself once he got back.

"You look really pale," Rose said. She sounded concerned.

Hux offered her a weak smile. "I suppose I am a bit shaken up." He regretted both the smile and the words almost immediately when Rose sat down next to him, eyes brimming with sympathy.

Rey walked in and glared at him. Hux flushed.

"Must have been hard, lying to everyone who got close to you all the time," Rey said.

 _Not really._ Leia had picked him for a reason, after all. Even Snoke had never suspected: Hux had had all the right connections, all the right ideals and desires. _All the right weaknesses._ Snoke's mistake had been not to look any deeper - but then, Hux was no Ben Solo, no Kylo Ren to be groomed as the next Darth Vader.

"Yes," he said. _And I'm afraid it's going to take me some time to shake the habit._

Her expression warmed a little. "You're the one who saved Finn's life, aren't you? By leaving his cell door open, so he could get away instead of being sent to be reeducated."

Now _there_ was an interesting leap of intuition. "I didn't suggest to him to go and find a Resistance pilot and make off with a TIE-fighter." Mostly because he hadn't dared risk talking to 'Finn'.

An escaped renegade stormtrooper had sounded like a good way to distract people from focusing on capturing the droid. Hux hadn't quite counted on it being quite that good a distraction though, let alone in also helping him with his Poe Dameron problem.

Rose was gazing at him in admiration that bordered on adoration.

Hux swallowed. "Of course, there are also a number of people I didn't save." He'd forced himself not to keep count. It hadn't always worked.

"Rose here saved Finn's life too, once," Rey said.

Rose blushed. "I also shot him," she said. "Before."

 _Before what?_ "Non-fatally, I assume."

Rose giggled. Rey gave him a judgmental look.

Hux shrugged at her by way of saying 'sorry, but I'm out of practice'.

She shifted a bit closer to him, which Hux took to mean his apology had been accepted. He wondered how to ask if either of them had someone waiting for them back home.

 _And if they haven't, what then?_ Yelling at people was a lot easier than getting them to like you, as so recently demonstrated by a pair of stormtroopers. _You're going to need friends more than you're going to need a lover. Or two._ Leia would welcome him, and that might help, but how many people in the Resistance would have lost a friend to General Hux in one way or another?

Forgiving someone for not having been able to save everyone was one thing; forgiving someone for having given the order that had cost one specific someone their life was another thing.

Hux did not see a lot of friendly faces in his future. A lot of meetings spilling his guts, yes, but once those were over, he'd be left to his own devices to make a place for himself.

"Don't look so worried," Rose said. "I'm not going to shoot _you_."

 _How about kissing me?_ Rey put a hand on his shoulder. Hux started guiltily, then told himself he was being ridiculous. Of all the things he had to feel guilty about, wanting to kiss a pretty girl had to rank very near the bottom of the list. _As does wanting to kiss two._

"Well, not unless you're going to try to desert," Rose added.

Hux decided there was a story there. He'd be interested in hearing it another time. "I think I'm safe, then." He tried another smile, more sincere this time.

Rose smiled back. "I like you."

_I like you too._

"I think you should leave this room now," Rey said.

Hux blinked. He felt sure that he'd been about to kiss Rose - or Rey, possibly. Both of them?

"But definitely come see us later. You know, when you're done being debriefed," Rose said. She was looking at Rey now, with a great deal of affection and fondness and some adoration, and Hux felt like an idiot, albeit one who would have some interesting fantasies to keep him warm at night - and impatient during the debriefing.

_You've been invited to come and see them. Don't ruin it by getting greedy._

There was a lot of kissing going on when he left, none of it involving him.

 

The debriefings were about as grueling as expected. Still less rage-inducing than the monthly budget meeting of the First Order, though. Hux had never failed to be appalled at the amount of money the First Order had at its disposal - and how much of it was wasted.

Leia might have built three empires and a fleet of death stars with those kinds of funds, and still have some left over to spend on miscellaneous expenses.

"You miss it?"

Hux looked up and blinked. _Miss what?_ "No," he said.

Leia sighed. "It's been years. Nobody expects you to fit in with the rest of us again right away. Take some time. Give people a chance to get to know you. You, not General Hux from the First Order. They'll come around."

"It's not that," Hux said, though it should have been. "I have an invitation."

Leia arched an eyebrow, then smiled. "Do you now? Good for you."

Hux sighed. "Work before pleasure."

"If you're lucky," Leia said. "As, by the sound of it, you are. Congratulations."

"I didn't do anything. It just happened."

"That's usually the way it works," Leia said. "Trust me on this. The best things in life, they are all things that 'just happen'. Of course, so do some of the worst ones. Still, what can you do?"

 _Resist,_ Hux thought. _Rebel. Survive. Jump into a cockpit and blow shit up._ Poe Dameron had not disappointed in real life. _Refuse to give up hope._

"Go," Leia said. "Live a little, Hux. You've earned it."

 

They weren't waiting for him when he got there, after asking for directions three times.

As Rose hugged him and Rey gave him a small smile and a nod, though, he realized that he'd been waiting for them, for what felt like a very long time.

_Home. At last._


End file.
